


i'm never in a rush

by shipyrds



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Dinosaurs, Fluff, Genderqueer Grantaire, M/M, Meet-Cute, drunken concern for Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 11:50:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5003710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipyrds/pseuds/shipyrds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m sorry, we don’t sell feathers here,” Courfeyrac  says, trying to sound as professional as is possible while saying “I’m sorry, we don’t sell feathers here” to a clearly drunken angel creature.<br/>--<br/>Combeferre steals an (anatomically incorrect) dinosaur. Hijinks ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm never in a rush

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for brief mental misgendering (quickly corrected) by the POV character.

Musichetta owes him. Musichetta owes him big time, Courfeyrac fumes, drumming his hands against the coffee shop’s counter. He hates working weekend nights. But Joly had gotten sick (really sick, this time, with a fever of 102) and Musichetta wanted to take care of him. Courfeyrac was relatively immune to her glare at this point, but when he’d seen the worry start to slip in around its edges, he’d caved. Who was he to say no to true love?

And now he’s stuck in the cafe at 11:32 pm on a Saturday night, instead of checking out a club Jehan had described as “revelatory.” Even if he hadn’t been planning on going out, the café was always entirely deserted this late. Working alone, besides being a total pain in the ass, gave him the creeps. He glares at the empty chairs and empty tables just sitting around, mocking him. “What are you looking at,” he grumbles. Oh god, he’s devolved into talking to himself.

He’s clinging to the knowledge that there’s only fifteen minutes left on his shift when the bell over the door rings, and the most beautiful man Courfeyrac has ever seen in his entire life walks in. Stumbles might be a more accurate term; he’s clearly quite drunk, if the way he’s mumbling to himself and weaving are any indication.

And he appears to be clutching an inflatable dinosaur. Forget creepy, empty cafes; this is why Courfeyrac hates working the night shift. Things get so weird, so fast. He summons up his best smile and says, “Can I help you?”

“Yes.” Gorgeous Dinosaur Man plops the dinosaur on the counter, which Courfeyrac kind of wants to protest about (it smells vaguely beery, and Joly’s influence has made Musichetta a stickler about hygiene) but the guy is really just so beautiful. So, so beautiful. “I need feathers. Do you sell feathers? It’s very important.”

Courfeyrac blinks. “Feathers.”

Gorgeous Dinosaur Man peers at his nametag, eyelashes brushing against his glasses. “Emile? Yes, please.”

He tries not to be swayed by the fact that Gorgeous Dinosaur Man has taken the time to try to read his name, despite the fact that he’s drunk enough for that to be an endeavor. Or by those cheekbones, which should probably be classed as a weapon. “I’m sorry, we don’t sell feathers here,” he says, trying to sound as professional as is possible while saying “I’m sorry, we don’t sell feathers here” to a clearly drunken angel creature.

Gorgeous Dinosaur Man’s face falls almost comically. “Are you-- are you sure?” he asks, holding the dinosaur closer. God, that vibrant green is doing wonders for the warm brown of his skin tone. “It’s just,” he continues, “this velociraptor is anatomically incorrect. I mean, look at her. Look at her! Her tail is too swishy, her hands are pronated, see, they should face inwards.” He pauses, giving demonstration a valiant effort, although the vinyl is definitely fighting him. “And they’ve given her an entire extra toe. I thought I could at least give her some feathers, preserve her dignity as much as possible.” He ruins the effect of this speech by hiccuping; his whole body moves up and down like he’s a cartoon.

Courfeyrac can’t help it. He’s gaping a bit. This is the most articulate drunken rant he’s ever heard, and he’s friends with Jehan. “Are you for real?” he blurts, and is immediately horrified. “Sorry, that was rude. It’s just-– wait, how did you even end up with an inflatable velociraptor if she’s so wrong?” He can’t imagine this guy spending money on something that’s clearly upsetting him so much.

Dino Man grins, leaning in. “Can I tell you a secret?” he says.

“Sure.” Courfeyrac smiles in spite of himself.

“I stole her.” Dino Man’s breath is hot and boozey on his cheek. It’s nice to know even very attractive dinosaur-wielding strangers have their flaws.

“Dude.”

“I did! They weren’t taking care of her and so I took her and now I need to put feathers on her. ‘S very important.”

“But we don’t have any feathers.”

“But you don’t have any feathers,” Dino Man says, nodding his head back and forth. “No feathers.” He seems to have forgotten to stop nodding, lapsing into a fairly peaceful, if bobble-headed, silence. The alcohol has clearly hit.

“Listen,” Courfeyrac begins, watching Dino Man’s face begin a slow slide down the velociraptor’s vinyl body. He’s wondering whether he’s going to be able to get this guy to his own home before he passes out, or if he’s going to be putting a stranger on his couch again. “Do you have any friends that were with you-–”

The bell over the door begins to tinkle its little heart out as a veritable torrent of people pour into the shop, all exclaiming over Drunken Dinosaur God.

“There you are!”

“God, we were so worried, why the hell would you wander off like that-–”

“Hold up.” One of them, a scruffy, short guy wearing a paint-stained crop top that reads “I’M NOT FUCKING WHITE” raises his hand, and astonishingly, the whole group falls silent. “Is that the dinosaur from Omega Psi Chi?”

“You stole a velociraptor from a frat party?” Courfeyrac whispers.

Dino God looks first at him, then at his friend, then back at him, looking increasingly overwhelmed. “Yes,” he says, finally.

The whole group cheers loudly. An enormous bear of a man in a floral vest claps Dino Guy on the shoulder, nearly knocking him over; someone else has grabbed him by the hand.

Courfeyrac begins to remember the eerily quiet café of earlier with some nostalgia. “Everyone,” he starts, “just letting you know, we technically closed two minutes ago, and while I don’t want to kick you out–-”

There’s a chorus of “oh shit!”s, and most of the group scramble out. Someone’s voice-– Courfeyrac thinks it’s the huge vested guy, who’s tucked Dino Man (and the velociraptor) under his arm –- booms back in. “Look at you, making us exploit the worker. The common man! Downtrodden under these very claws!”

Beanie dude has stayed behind. “I’m R,” he says, and hallelujah, Courfeyrac at least has one name from this motley crew. Even if it’s not necessarily the name he most wants. “I just wanted to apologize for my friend,” he says, waving off Courfeyrac’s disavowal. “I know it sucks ass having to close late. Really, thanks for humoring him.”

“Dude,” Courfeyrac begins, then stops when he sees the grimace on R’s face. “Not a dude? Shit, I’m sorry.”

R fiddles with the napkin dispenser. “I use they pronouns usually, but it’s not really a big deal. Don’t put yourself out.”

“Dude–-no, sorry. Buddy? Pal? Comrade?” R is chuckling, which he hopes is a good sign. “First off, me using your pronouns is not a hardship. It’s being a minimally non-shitty person, and I shouldn’t have assumed to begin with. Second off, all I did was listen to him. That, and tell him we don’t sell feathers here.”

R laughs even harder. “Feathers? Oh my god, of course. Of fucking course.” Their whole body shakes when they laugh. Courfeyrac thinks they might actually be tearing up.

“Are you okay?” he says, when R starts wheezing a bit.

“Sorry,” they say, wiping away a couple tears. “Sorry, it’s just-– he’s usually so staid, but he drinks two cups of terrible frat boy punch and a beer-– also, we are never going back to a frat party, oh my god-– and he’s suddenly crying over dinosaurs.” They let out a giggle-snort. “Meanwhile, here I am, practically sober, acting like the responsible one. What a night. What a weird, Saturnalian night. Never go to a toga party,” they add. “It’ll be full of terrible white bros, all the togas will be draped incorrectly, there will be random unexplainable dinosaurs that your friend will steal, and the Roman pantheon will reach forward through the ages and make everything all upside-down.”

Courfeyrac doesn’t mean to look at the clock, but he does, and R, bless their heart, notices. “I should let you go home to your bed, and I will go home to mine,” they say, waving a weird salute-type goodbye. “Io Saturnalia!”

The bell tinkles softly behind them. Courfeyrac looks around the café, which shows no signs of the past hour’s activities, and then drops his head into his hands and laughs and laughs and laughs.

 

* * *

 

He’s not laughing when Musichetta calls him at six-thirty the next morning and begs him to open up for her. Joly is no better after a feverish night’s sleep, and Bossuet can’t miss another constitutional law class or he’ll fail. Eponine will be coming in at eight-thirty, so he won’t really be alone for the worst of the rush, she says, and Joly keeps trying to find his magnets. In his delirium, she’s worried he’s going to hurt himself.

He tries to psych himself up for it while taking the fastest shower humankind has ever seen. He loves his job. It pays well, he can wear whatever he wants, he gets to see tons and tons of people and make their days better, and he has the best boss in the world. He can do this. He can be a goddamn ray of sunshine.

It mostly works. Ten minutes later, he’s whistling to himself on the Metro. He throws a blinding grin at a businessman who looks askance at his glitter nail polish. “It’s called ‘Gay Ponies Dancing in the Snow,’” he says. “Isn’t it great?”

The businessman glowers. Today may not be so terrible after all.

Courfeyrac slides into work at 6:58, just in time to flip the sign to open and start up the espresso machine. He hopes no one orders anything complicated. Not because he’s a shit barista, but his ability to make a extra-hot triple-shot half-skim half-whole milk mochaccino with an extra shot of caramel, double cups, flat top is severely weakened when he’s had five hours of sleep. Ep shows up, glowering even more than usual, and they fight good-naturedly for control of the music (Courfeyrac yields when Ep plays the “I’m hungover and if I have to listen to Wham! this morning I may murder a customer” card.) It’s a normal morning. It’s a good morning. They make it through the rush and, caught between Courf’s jittery smile and Eponine’s glare, no one decides to prove their hipster credentials by ordering the Worst Drink in the World.

Then Gorgeous Dino Man comes in, and Eponine takes one look at Courfeyrac’s face and makes a beeline for the back room, muttering. He’s even more gorgeous this morning, carefully buttoned up in a shirt and sweater rolled up to expose his tattooed (!) forearms. Apparently Dinosaur Gods have preternatural powers of hangover recovery. 

“Hello,” Courfeyrac says. He is not drooling. He is not. He is a goddamn professional. Drooling at customers has to be a health code violation. “What can I get you today?”

Gorgeous Dino Man rubs the back of his neck (oh god, his biceps. Courfeyrac is weak. _Weak_.) “I actually wanted to apologize for last night,” he says. “I really don’t usually get that drunk, but apparently I accosted you with stolen goods and made you stay past closing, which is really rude, and not at all my usual m.o.”

“I’ll stay past _your_ closing,” blurts Courfeyrac, before his brain catches up with his mouth and he has to physically clap his hand over it. “Oh my god,” he says. “Oh my god, I am so sorry, I have no idea why I just said that, consent is really important and I would never stay past any time you closed up and now I know how Marius feels all the time, I’m going to stop talking now _Jesus take the wheel_.” The last sentence comes out muffled, because he is hiding his face in his hands so that perhaps Dino Man will forget he’s there and he can sneak away and die. After a few seconds he peers between his fingers.

Dino Man, unfortunately, still retains his concept of object permanence and has not forgotten about Courfeyrac, but fortunately, he seems to be laughing and not running away in horror.

“I swear I usually know how words work,” Courfeyrac says, still into his hands. “But I guess technically now we’re even? You came in here at midnight with a pilfered dinosaur, I flirted with you abominably when you tried to apologize, score settled?”

“You look much nicer when your face isn’t covered with your hands, you know,” Dino Man says, a laugh still fluttering in his voice, and _what_.

Courfeyrac looks up, and Dino Man is grinning back at him. He has plush lips and an slight gap between his two front teeth which is frankly adorable. Courfeyrac kind of wants to bury his face back in his hands, because he hasn’t embarrassed himself in front of someone this cute since the second grade, when he tried to push Emily Singh on the swings and ended up pushing her entirely _off_ the swings.

“Anyway, I don’t think we’re entirely even-- I took up nearly half an hour of your time, and you’ve only taken up--” he glances at his watch-- “five minutes of mine. Plus, call it overtime since it was much later and I was extremely drunk, and I owe you, let’s call it, an hour?”

“I’m not sure that’s how math works, but I’m willing to see where you’re going with this,” Courfeyrac says.

Dino Man smiles again. It’s somehow even more attractive than it was the first time. “I’m hoping you are,” he says. “I was wondering, since I owe you an hour, if you would be interested in grabbing coffee some time?”

Courfeyrac can’t help it. He bursts out laughing. “That may be the smoothest thing I’ve ever heard,” he says, giggling, “except for the part where I literally work in a coffee shop.” He leans over the counter. “I would, however, be really, really interested in getting lunch. In fact, I am free as of--” he strips off his apron-- “right now. Ep!” he yells back in the general direction of the back room. “I am leaving! Please stop doing whatever nefarious thing you’ve been doing in back there for the past ten minutes!”

Ep comes out, her eyes narrowed. “Fuck you, Courfeyrac.”

He gives her a shit-eating grin and comes around to the other side of the counter.

“Oh good,” Dino Man says in a rush of breath. “If you had said no, I would have had to offer odd jobs or something, and that would have been disastrous.”

“I bet you’d be amazing at odd jobs, though,” Courfeyrac says, and he swears he used to be better at flirting than this.

“I’m really not,” says Dino Man, holding the door open for him. “My friends all think I’m competent, but that’s only by contrast. Bossuet once accidentally lit himself on fire. In comparison, I can only look incredibly smooth.”

“Oh well,” Courfeyrac says, flapping a hand, “haven’t we all lit ourselves on fire once or twice?”

“Well, he was on a pool float at the time,” Dino Man replies, “so it really was something of a feat.”

Courfeyrac blinks, the rest of that sentence catching up to him. “Wait,” he says. “You know Bossuet?”

“Well, yes.” Dino Man frowns slightly. “His boyfriend Joly goes to school with me.”

“I’m sorry,” Courfeyrac says. “I just realized I never got your name-- I’ve been calling you Gorgeous Dino Man in my head all day.”

Dino Man snorts and ducks his head. “I’m Combeferre,” he says. “Although I am entirely willing to answer to Gorgeous Dino Man.”

Courfeyrac stares at him, and the smile begins to slide off his face. “Is something wrong?” Combeferre says.

“No, no,” Courfeyrac says, trying not to dissolve into laughter, “it’s just that for the past month Joly has been badgering me to try and set me up on a date with his ‘incredibly gorgeous inexplicably single very nerdy friend Combeferre.’ “

“Oh my god,” Combeferre says. “Your nametag said Emile, so I thought--”

“Yeah, I usually go by Courfeyrac, but at work I don’t bother because no one can pronounce it.” He grins. “Joly is going to pitch a fit.”

“We could still let him set us up,” offers Combeferre. “It might cheer him up-- I hear he needs it.”

“Nahhh.” Courfeyrac links his arm with Combeferre’s. He’s not sure he can stop smiling. “I have a feeling I’d be really terrible at hiding you.”

“We haven’t even gotten lunch yet,” Combeferre protests, but he’s rubbing his hand over Courfeyrac’s arm.

“True,” Courfeyrac says, dropping his arm to grab Combeferre’s hand. “True. But when I'm not keeping half of Paris caffeinated, I’m a psychology student, which I think makes me pretty good at predicting human behavior.”

Combeferre’s hand is large, his fingers square and neat. “Even Gorgeous Dinosaur Men?” he asks.

“Well, I haven’t extensively studied them,” Courfeyrac admits. “But I’m always willing to take on a research project.”

“That was incredibly cheesy,” Combeferre informs him. “But I’m always willing to further the cause of science.” He rubs his thumb over Courfeyrac’s fingers. “In the spirit of inquiry: where do you want to get lunch?”

**Author's Note:**

> two fics in three days! it's a midterms miracle! Courferre is the pairing of my small nerdy heart so this finished easy. 
> 
> this one is actually based on a real-life event (yes, I did assist in the removal of a dinosaur from a place where it was not being loved. no, I did not then accost a cute person in a coffee shop.) I know nothing about coffee shops; many apologies to anyone who works in one.
> 
> title is from They Might Be Giants' "I Am a Paleontologist," which will now be stuck in my head for all of eternity.
> 
> for the record, [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velociraptor#/media/File:Velociraptor_dinoguy2.jpg) is closer to what velociraptors actually looked like. fight me (and Combeferre. actually, fight Combeferre. i am bad at fighting.)
> 
> Grantaire's outfit is based on [this beautiful creation](http://antisepticbandaid.tumblr.com/post/128373165704/lesmisfurry-probably-going-to-be-my-least) by antisepticbandaid
> 
> the nail polish color "Gay Ponies Dancing in the Snow" [ does actually exist](http://www.smithandcult.com/gay-ponies-dancing-in-the-snow.html), although it's obscenely expensive for a nail polish and Courf would definitely not be able to afford it on a barista's salary.


End file.
